Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday December 15, 2012 @12:12PM
from the y'kin-never-take-our-freedom dept.

Gordonjcp writes "The BBC are reporting that the proposed automatic blocking of porn websites by UK ISPs has been rejected by the government. Only 35% of the parents who responded to a survey on filtering wanted an automatic block. The report (PDF), drawn from over 3500 responses, found that 80% of all those who responded were in favour of no filtering of any kind."

Yeah, and if a kid comes into a store and wants to buy a porn magazine with his allowance then clearly the parents are just coasting on the law instead of parenting, so we should just take away the law. No matter how much you parent, kids will sometimes refuse to comply. If they don't want to brush their teeth before they go to bed, explaining it and leaving the choice up to them isn't good parenting. Sometimes you just have to hit that override switch and say either you're brushing your teeth or I'm brushi

A filtering tool should at least be something for each to set up or opt in to, if they feel they need it. If it's supposed to be good parenting, it needs to be something they actively involve themselves with in some form.

Sometimes you just have to hit that override
switch and say either you're praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster or I'm making you pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster,
but you're not going to go to bed without praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and that is
final.

IMHO that is not even the biggest issue here. It has already been proved in Finland, that the (child)porn filtering is- Used to block local websites that tell people the truth about the porn filtering (e.g. by providing a list of websites that are blocked and don't contain information that according to the law should be blocked)- The websites that are blocked, have absolutely no way to get out of the list (the owner of the website has tried for over a 4 years now)- Already discussions have started about extending the block (e.g. the pirate bay is already blocked)- It was not written into the law, but the creators of the law explained that it should be used only on foreign websites, yet right from the start a local website (mentioned above) was blocked.

Because blocking the bits is simply not possible and not worth the collateral effects. The laws in place are already sufficient to deal with the problem if they are correctly applied. We don't need to break the internet to help you to fool yourself and make you feel a bit safer.

There are many countries with Internet Blacklists "to block child porn". Every damn one of them has put opposing political party websites on the list within a year. Slashdot has had several articles about this over the years.

It already is blocked. That's one of the arguments that proponents of the blocking are using: ISPs have blocked child porn, which proves that they do have the ability to block things, thus they should have no reason to refuse.

It already is blocked. That's one of the arguments that proponents of the blocking are using: ISPs have blocked child porn, which proves that they do have the ability to block things, thus they should have no reason to refuse.

If all ISPs and search engines agree to block anything flagged as child porn then wouldn't this solve the problem of child porn distribution? Then we wouldn't have to arrest thousands of people a year.

If all ISPs and search engines agree to block anything flagged as child porn then wouldn't this solve the problem of child porn distribution? Then we wouldn't have to arrest thousands of people a year.

Doesn't work. How would you flag something as child porn - or not choild porn? There is no way of doing this automatically.

because blocking:
a: doesn't actually prevent access
b: costs money
c: allows the government to ignore the fact that the material exists rather than trying to put the creator/distributor in jail
d: fucks with my internet

c: allows the government to ignore the fact that the material exists rather than trying to put the creator/distributor in jail

d: fucks with my internet

A. It does make access hard enough that no one who isn't actively looking for it can stumble upon it by accident.B. It costs even more money to arrest people on possession charges.C. The material isn't the issue, the harm to children during the production is the issue.D. I think our internet is fucked with more when we have to worry about tinyurl and other random links infecting us with child porn.

where are you going that you're stumbling on child porn all the time? and c: that was my point, if you go after the creator/distributor you're actually *doing* something to protect children rather than ignoring the problem.

C. So why are we blocking it? Why is there a problem with people stumbling upon it by accident (A)? Why should possession be illegal (B)?

If the problem isn't the material but the harm but the damage caused by production, surely the trick is to make production illegal. Or even better, make actual child abuse illegal, and then try to stop it from happening? The resources put into filtering, blocking and pursuing people for possession could be better spent on prevention and helping victims, perhaps.

D. I think our internet is fucked with more when we have to worry about tinyurl and other random links infecting us with child porn.

The existence of the child porn filter in the UK proved to UK courts that ISP's are capable of cheaply filtering Pirate Bay, and as a consequence various non-child porn sites are now blocked. Hopefully the mission creep to regular porn will be avoided this time, but it seems likely that our luck will run out sooner or later.

Once we get another terrorist attack (it is bound to happen sooner or later), "glorifying terrorism" is likely to go in the filter too, and that could end access to Roj TV and Al Jazeera

If you believe in any of the basic tenets of democracy, the case to answer is always for the "why" side not the "why not" when it comes to censorship. Simply asking "hey, why not just introduce a repressive censorship regime?" is not valid by itself if you want to call your country a democracy.

Or to put it into numbers: 3500 people responded, and 80% of them didn't want porn filtering, which means that 700 of them were in favour of porn filters. This could mean that 2000 of the 3500 people have to have been parents, because 35% of them would add up exactly to 700 persons, if none of the non-parents wanted any porn filtering at all. (If we assume 10% of the non-parents to be in favour of porn filters, we would have 350 non parenting people for filters, remaining 350 parents for filters, which in

Actually, it does add up, when you consider the breakdown of the total people polled:

There were more than 3,500 responses to the 10-week consultation - which included those from members of the public, academics, charities and communication firms as well as 757 from parents.

So parents made up less than 20% of the total respondents, and some parents were in favor of no filtering of any kind.
Even in the UK, people understand that government shouldn't be in the business of filtering lawful material, and tha

So, in other words, 2/3 of parents actually don't want government to think of their children all the time and instead want it to stay the hell out? Who would have thought...

Who would have thought that the majority of parents do NOT want government to take over raising their kids and instead want to hand down their own values instead of letting government dictate what values they should have?

Who is to say that porn is bad? How many spouses learn a trick or two that they can use to better satisfy their partner? How many parents would rather have their teenage children watch porn rather than explaining the fine points of having sex? Why should society make a teenager satisfy his or her sexual needs with a partner rather than watching some porn? Porn has been freely available for about 20 years and their is no correlation between the availability of porn and any negative consequences such as r

Although I agree porn is not necessarily bad I don't know If it is a good teaching aid either. I think most porn is not a realistic portrayal of sex, and really doesn't excuse parents from explaining sex to their children.

Who would have thought that the majority of parents do NOT want government to take over raising their kids and instead want to hand down their own values instead of letting government dictate what values they should have?

The article states that 50% of parents wanted some form of content filtering. Besides which, I'm not sure what part of the world you're from, but the parents I've been around do try to protect their children from pornography... It's not one of the values they hand down.

I would wager that the reluctance is due in part to: 1. the parents actually wanting access to porn for themselves, but not their children (hypocrisy); and, 2. the parents weighing the consequences of accidental blocking content, such as sexu

I can see the parents' wish to keep kids from watching content they do not deem suitable for them (personally, I'd make sure they never have to endure a second of those Teletubbies), but consider this: ONE of their friends WILL have unfiltered access. Either because his parents don't care, because he knows how to outsmart the filter or because his parents use insecure passwords. And kids have a LOT of time for guessing...

And then he'll get his sex ed from his friends and their computers. Is that what you wa

I believe the opt-in approach was supposed to take this into account... but yes, it would be possible to circumvent the system. The idea is that it is made at least somewhat difficult to do so, such as filtering at the ISP level. This would remove the convenience factor, which I think would eliminate a good deal of the problem, and is something that parents could not do without government intervention.

Though, like I said, the heavy handed approach of blocking at ISP through content sniffing will cause other

I work at a school. We block all TCP and UDP traffic except port 80, which transparently redirects to a filter proxy. We use one of the best network filters on the market (Smoothwall). We have DNS filtered, HTTPS blocked. The stations are locked down, the list constantly updated, and on a semi-regular basis a technician (me) rummages through every image in every student area.

Nothing wrong with porn, anyone here not knowing at the very least one page that contains it?

I just want to be as certain as possible to be there (instead of, say, a school friend) when my kids stumble upon it. If they're at home, I can. if they can only access it outside of our home, I cannot.

The UK government doesn't care what ordinary people think. You can be sure this or something like it will be back in the near future. It is a small comfort that the general public isn't as much brainwashed sheeple as I might have expected, but it will make no difference in the long run.

The current UK government doesn't want this. So they will be using the figures to support their position.

The government doesn't want it as it is imposing excessive regulation on industry. The only reason they looked at it in the first place was a backbench MP got together with the Daily Mail (yes, the Mail of all people was complaining about access sexualised content on the internet, I guess they want a monopoly...) and caused a lot of fuss.

The UK government was only doing this as a response to a vocal (and typically vicious) campaign from the Daily Mail and other members of the right-wing gutter press. They didn't really want to implement anything like this (being expensive and difficult), but they couldn't afford to have their usual support base turning against them.

This consultation lets them drop it while saving face. "We tried our best, but the people have spoken- sorry grass-root supporters!".

Censorship (imho) is when the state tells you you can't talk about something.

Privacy is when you tell other people you don't want them talking about your personal stuff.

While there can be some overlap (the state telling you not to talk about someone else's personal stuff), they are two different things. Bank details come under privacy. Web-blocking comes under Censorship.

I think it would be great if we lived in a society mature enough to not need privacy, but for now we are stuck with it. Same with censorsh

That was a court, not politicians. The law was introduced by the EU in the early 2000s, so Labour was behind it, not the Tories. Labour love interfering and nannying (and cosying up to has-been musicians). The Conservatives don't like interfering with businesses unless its to make other businesses they prefer richer, so were against this web-blocking proposal from the beginning (and only looked into it because a backbench MP and the Daily Mail kicked up a fuss) - the survey was to give them an excuse to she

For all those brainless sheep suggesting that Blocking Child Pornography is a good thing, please take a few seconds to think through the actual real world implications of what you're suggesting.

- In practice when they talk about filtering "the internet" they mean filtering HTTP (and HTTPS) access ONLY.- That means that OTHER distribution means (HTTP over VPN, TOR, encrypted files over P2P, URLS to FTP servers, private email servers, etc) will not be filtered.

They are idealists, have their opinion, and will seek as much publicity as they can with that opinion. Now they certainly will do good work within their niche, those strong opinions are not usually a reflection of the overall community.

And that's not about government funding (which they normally get for their real activities such as manning a child abuse report hotline), those remarks are to get private funding, which comes from people that have the same strong opinions, and think that by donating to like-m

Automatic porn blocking is wrong on so many levels. Firstly, it should be opt-in so "concerned parents" are probably the only ones using it. Secondly, it's very likely to block non-porn sites as false positives and yet there will never be a porn list you can check publicly check against (because a) it'll be a good source for your porn bookmarks and b) it's done in "secret" to avoid a rival org taking the list and putting it in their porn filter list for free). Thirdly, it *will* be use as stepping stone to